Scientific Method

A method of concept building for providing a change of paradigm in physics. 

Our theory is based on the assumption that the vacuum energy of quantum mechanics consists of an immensely energetic aether. We have cross-checked a large number of possible aether properties in order to find the properties that are mutually consistent as we scrutinize our models against a huge amount of known facts in physics. Through this process we have arrived at an aether ”vessel” that carries certain properties. Building a whole new platform for physics, we must make a lot of assumptions along the road. Our theory has been changed and remodeled many times, and also over the past months important contributions have been added. The fact that we still make changes should warn the reader that this is not a ready product with all the solutions, it is more a platform for how we can solve the remaining challenges for a unifying theory of physics, and you need to participate to take us there. We are proud to present a lot of groundbreaking postulates, and we are quite confident that many of them will survive the scrutiny of the scientific community. We would be equally surprised and delighted if we have made no major mistakes. 

The comprehensive nature of this task makes it unsuited for many separate publications, as is the normal procedure of presenting a thesis today. Rather we have chosen the format of a monograph, which was more commonly used some decades ago.  This is because the proposed solutions contradicts many existing paradigms in physics. Any single postulate made in this thesis can easily be ripped apart and rejected with reference to known paradigms. Only when we build the new paradigm from the bottom and demonstrate that it can work for all aspects of physics, will it be possible to argue for such a fundamental shift of paradigm.

In  an attachment to the Norwegian magazine ”Astronomi  ” no. 4, 2009 we presented an early version of our theory, Forces by Proxy. This was done in the format of a popular science presentation, including an animated video presentation. Scientifically it was a “raw” publication presented as an invitation to the community of physicists to join in on this path towards a theory of everything. This process has taken its time, but finally we have penetrated most of the major obstacles that were posing serious questions about the inner logic of our theory. 

Building models that match the observable universe

The method for substantiating the specific aether concept of this theory is based on building consistent, separate models explaining every force of nature and phenomena in physics within the severe constraints of the aether. For these models to function properly, the elementary particles must have certain properties regarding how they are built and how they interact with the aether. It is not within the scope of this presentation to prove this aether concept indisputably. Rather we want to show that the choice of specific properties in the aether as well as in elementary particles places extreme restrictions to the possible models concerning how nature can work. Hence the concept would run into severe contradictions unless it is true. It is difficult to make simple explanations regarding so many phenomena based on false assumptions. We are attempting to make it self evident for the reader that it is highly unlikely that we can make so many restrictive definitions and still make them all fit perfectly with the observable universe. 

The process of  unravelling the possible nature of physics has been the opposite of a tidy, sequential process. The necessary properties of the aether and of the elementary particles have been amended many times in the process of the concept development. After the 2009 presentation several amendments have been incorporated in our theory, and many of the models have become more plausible with the choice of amended working mechanisms for the interaction between the aether and the elementary particles. A deeper understanding of the processes has led to very specific postulates in quantum mechanics, which we deem as the leading theory in physics. From there we have reached ground-breaking insight into relativity, and especially what time is and what causes time dilation. 

You may ask how we just can make up new working mechanisms in a world that must always be the same. To answer that, we are looking at what a conceptual theory like ours implies. You start out with a few basic assumptions, and start testing them against a vast body of evidence. Some assumptions are solidified in the process, some are in need of being amended, but some assumptions must be discarded. The point being that not previously, and not now, do we claim to present 100% correct working mechanisms, but we are getting closer as we are reaching new insight.  

A comprehensive approach to methodology 

A possible comparison to our method would be that of Charles Darwin and his theory on natural selection which resulted in; “On the origin of species:” in 1859. Nature offers a dazzling number of empirical evidence for how it works. Darwin’s contribution was to observe and find the best set of underlying mechanisms that could best explain all observable data; the selection of species by means of natural selection. Facing a vast complexity and an even greater body of evidence, he would have to start at some point with some bold postulates  based on a few and limited observations that he generalized. And even though he carved out the main working mechanism quite early in his career, we can be quite confident that he would need to go back and forth and make a lot of adjustments to exactly how his main postulate could explain everything. He spent two decades on this process before publishing his thesis. People ended up accepting Darwin’s thesis because it explained everything, even though his postulate of natural selection put severe restriction on how we could interpret nature. We even had to discard the religious belief that God literally created mankind.  

We are choosing Darwin as an example for our method rather than Newton or Einstein, because Darwin had a much more holistic approach, and his thesis was a general principle for the modus operandi of nature based on random, statistical processes, not a mathematical prescription. The fact that the true nature of our universe has escaped clarification for about a century indicates that there is a need for a major break with fundamental postulates in physics. This cannot easily be achieved through a process of revision based on calculations, when many basic foundations for those calculations must be discarded.  

The process of building a new theory. 

From the introduction it should be clear that Forces by Proxy (FbP) aims at being a theory of everything, as is the common name of a theory that can  reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity in a common theoretical framework. Not only does it reconcile these opposing theories, it also defines the true nature of time taken from the realm of aether interaction beneath the level of quantum mechanics. We offer two levels of new insight into the fundamental working of time; at the aether level and at the QM level.  

We had to construct a whole new perspective on reality to make this work, thereby discarding numerous paradigms in physics. Normally such a radical approach will be met with the outmost scrutiny and scepticism. One of our problems is that we cannot easily prove our case. As many of our postulates are well beyond our reach for gaining empirical knowledge, we must substantiate it. Therefore we have chosen a rather unusual method for developing and proving FbP.  

·     First some properties of the aether were postulated, together with the properties of the elementary particles.  

·     Then in an  iterative process, the properties were tested for how they possibly can work for different forces of nature, and the features of the aether were adapted accordingly. 

·     Then the forces and the possible properties were held against more advanced phenomena in physics, like the uncertainty principle and general and special relativity, triggering new rounds of adjustments in all aspects of the theory in order to accommodate the restriction introduced in this process. 

·     Then some anomalies in physics were addressed and explained within the new concept. Sometimes we had a good match, other times it triggered new rounds of adjustments. 

Developing the concept, we will also show tentative models for how nature may work according to FbP. We have noticed that most physicists are of the general opinion that an aether theory like Forces by Proxy is close to unthinkable. Our models are presented with the purpose of demonstrating that there are reasonable aether models readily available for explaining each force and phenomena in physics. These models may be correct to a level comparable to Bohr’s old model of an electron in a nice orbit around an atomic core of nucleons. (By now we know that the electron orbit is better understood as a statistical probability cloud limited to certain energy levels.) Our goal is that  our models will substantiate the concept by providing an example of a possible working mechanism for the different phenomena in question. Contesting so many paradigms as we do, we better show some plausible working mechanisms of our alternative view of nature. It is not our claim that all our models shall survive the scrutiny of the scientific community.  

Challenging established paradigms.

We aim at discarding several paradigms that have been carved in stone for almost 100 years. Some of our statements challenging established paradigms are:

·     The aether exists in a far more invasive version than thought possible. Instead of being intimidated by the negative results of Michelson and Morley, we take it to the next level. 

·     There is a hidden reality at the fundament of QM concerning the interaction probability of the aether. There are laws for how the free aether units interact with aether units retained in particles. 

·     Elementary particles are structures that thrive on a transient population of rapidly changing aether units. The Higgs particle may be for real, but it has little to do with the process of giving energy and momentum to particles.  

·     Direct attractive forces across empty space do not exist, they can only be executed as forces by proxy through the pressure from the background aether. 

·     Gravity is based on aether pressure deficiency radiating outwards from matter, most likely because of aether losing interaction probability when interacting with particles.  

·     The curved space-time of Einstein is a type of renormalisation using net aether pressure differences combined with space and time in order to, according to Forces by Proxy, get rid of the total aether pressure. This incurs limitations on the theory at both ends; at extremely dense masses and at extremely small scales. 

·     General relativity fails toward large masses, most easily seen with time singularities, which brings relativity outside the aether pressure of its validity

·     The uncertainty principle is based on the stochastic process of random impulse transfers from the aether.  

·     A detectable QM event is a function of two statistically independent subevents, thus explaining entanglement as regular statistics. 

·     Proper time is conservation of uncertainty. In the reference frame of a mass particle, time stretches to assure that the expectation value of stochastic QM processes is constant. 

·     Attractive gluons are only mathematical phantoms representing low aether pressure zones around quarks. Repulsive aether beams from quarks should be added to the model.

Nature presents a vast body of empirical data revealing its way of functioning. Various forces and phenomena in physics are very different, yet they are linked by common laws that put severe restrictions on any theory of everything. It is almost unthinkable that anyone can present a consistent theory of all phenomena in physics, without such a theory being correct in the main structure. There are simply too many check-points to pass. This is our best argument for our energetic aether theory, Forces by Proxy. It is consistent all the way through the various branches of physics.  

Everyone admits that General relativity has no explanatory power on small QM phenomena. There is a vacuum catastrophe. The standard model of particle physics could have been more precise. Most of all – no forces are really explained and understood. Our aether theory is our contribution to solve all these questions, and advices plausible models as to how nature functions. Where today’s physics lack consistency and explanatory power, we provide both. At every crossroad, we have made aether models explaining how nature works. It is very unlikely that we would have been able to present such a diversity  

of aether working mechanisms unless there is a fundamental support for an aether theory. This said, without claiming that all our individual models are correct.  

Contesting Forces by Proxy.

There will be little conclusive proof of FbP in this presentation in the sense that we make falsifiable predictions.  We have suggested a way to improve the standard model with respect to atoms by introducing repulsive beams in a repulsive grid in addition to gluons. We also suggest a way to measure our direction through the aether.  More importantly, the fact that we can make a vast body of well substantiated models is in itself a proof, unless the totality can be discarded on its own grounds.  Our method contains 3 main criteria which may allow you to falsify our aether theory. 

1.    We have defined quite precisely many properties of the aether, and of the elementary particles and their way of interacting. We expect that some adjustments will be necessary, but it should be obvious that with all the limitations posed by experimental evidence, any physicist should be able to discard the fundament of our theory quite easily if its main postulates lead to contradictions that cannot be resolved within the paradigm of the energetic aether.  

2.    Considering all the established paradigms our aether theory is conflicting with, you will find many far reaching conclusions which enable you to question the reliability of the theory.  

3.    We have also given a few tentative mathematical formulae, which are open for your scrutiny.  

If you want to attack our aether theory in a fair and square way, you must first think in term of this aether, and understand its inner consistency. Standing alone, every sub-model seems highly improbable in view of today’s paradigm in physics. There is a reason why there has been 100 years of futile search for a theory of everything. You cannot grasp it unless you start almost afresh. That is why we urge you to first understand our way of thinking before considering to discard our theory. 

The task of bringing every sub-model to the highest scientific level is formidable. For the advances of physics, it is better that the whole community of physicists can take advantage of these models now, instead of us using years to improve on them before releasing our work. Therefore, the theory is presented in this format, while much work remains undone regarding testing, verification and mathematical formulation of the models.

The dynamic flaw of peer review. 

A tale of a methodology that enhances and conserves accepted errors.

In our work with ferreting out the true basics of physics, we have been astonished by the certainty with which the community of physicists claims certain assumptions to be as good as proven, and thus to be taken as the starting point for all academic research – if you want to be taken seriously, that is. Especially the field of astrophysics has accepted many highly questionable assumptions to be the one and only truth. In a field of such difficulties with verification, one should rather expect a greatly divided community, each claiming a different starting point. Why is that not the case? 

One answer would be that they have already found the truth – the state of physics has developed beyond the point of reasonable doubt regarding subjects like big bang, black holes, dark energy, dark matter etc. Our view is rather the opposite, that the certainty of the community on these paradigms is based on a catastrophic weakness of the scientific methodology of peer review.  

How come that a method of thorough scrutiny by the best of peers can be dysfunctional and promote erroneous conclusions? Then we must look at how scientists work today. Every sub-field of science has an enormous amount of existing knowledge piled up. As a scientist you will attack one small area where you will try to push the frontier of science forwards. To achieve recognition for your work, you must get your work published in a science magazine after a peer review process. You will boldly claim the new findings of your narrow field of expertise. However, for all related areas of science you will refer to the most acknowledged results available. You use the best consensus results of others in order to get your own ideas through the scrutiny at minimal delay and efforts. Hence all references outside your own field will serve to confirm the best consensus results at the time.  

This sounds unproblematic, and it is unproblematic for a short period of time. One must look at this methodology from a dynamical viewpoint to see where the peer review approach will lead us astray. The bias of the peer review method lies in the time aspect. As doctors and professors pursue their research, they will cross-refer to the same consensus results in their publications, and this alone can be enough to raise a rather dubious hypothesis to a status of paradigm over a generation or two. But science also build models and progresses. So when a hypothesis achieves this best-available status, scientists will start to build theories around it, and the best-available hypothesis becomes the foundation of a huge set of other theories. In this way, an erroneous theory will not only be confirmed by cross-references, but it will be the built-in precondition for other theories.  

As far as we can see, there is little understanding within the scientific community for these types of dynamical problems with persistence of the same cross references and the peer review process. Rather to the contrary, modern science is so vast, that most younger scientists feel overwhelmed and humiliated by their lack of overview. So they tend to rely on the correctness of the publications of the leading brains of their field to an extent that conserves established paradigms.  

Young scientists may be as rebellious as they like, in most cases they end up as servile reproducers of existing paradigms, whether these paradigms are correct or incorrect. And if you want to make some changes in a paradigm, you end up challenging not one, but tens of established theories. A young scientist pursuing something of this kind, will most likely never qualify for scholarships because of lack of approved publications and lack of peer approval. This is the big flaw of today’s peer review system. It conserves and enhances erroneous paradigms over a timeline.  

Do we know a better way to get a quality control on research than peer review methodology? It is the lack of understanding of the limitations and dangers inherent in peer review that is the problem. One should educate scientists in the methodological problems that this process constitutes over time. And perhaps start setting probabilities to certain paradigms and systematically work to avoid that they slip past 50% validity until firmly confirmed. Most importantly, the demand for a long list of references in publications should be reviewed.

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Special Relativity 

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Some support for the aether